


A Deadly Blade

by IcyStarlight



Category: IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hoshimeguri AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 11:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16284191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IcyStarlight/pseuds/IcyStarlight
Summary: Lama is war. It’s people wouldn’t know how to live without it. Erin is no different from the rest of them. This is the trail of blood he leaves on the way to the throne. This is how he became the King's blade.





	A Deadly Blade

Lama is war. It’s people wouldn’t know how to live without it. He’s seen how the people of this star thrive in battle, thrive when they’re needed to fight. He’s seen the underground fight rings. He’s stood on that stage himself before. As a young child, Erin carved his name into those rings. Fighting meant a chance to survive. Fighting meant winning and winning meant money for food, clothes, and shelter. He doesn’t remember where he grew up. He’s pretty sure it was the streets. Stealing and running from the guards, a master of stealth and pickpocketing. He wouldn’t be like the other kids who got caught. 

Eventually he does get caught. Not by the guard no, by someone far worse. His master is ruthless. He yells until Erin cries, he hits until Erin can no longer stand, and he turns a child into a weapon. Training is hard. Way harder than living on the streets. But sometimes when he beats his teacher’s tests he gets to pick what they eat for dinner. It’s not kindness but a show of respect and Erin thrives under his master’s teachings. 

Someone comes for his master one day. Before Erin gets any real experience in what his master has been teaching him. But with the skills he learned on the streets, he manages to hide and remain unseen when the men come. They kill his teacher, destroy his things, and then burn the house down. The fire makes for an easy get away under the cover of the billowing smoke. It’s not that he didn’t care these people just killed his teacher, it’s more so he's always just been surviving on his own and this is nothing new. 

It’s harder being on the streets now that he’s older and not a small child. Harder to hide and remain unseen. He hears the stories of the men that killed his teacher. He hears what they’ve done and what they do. Kidnapping children and forcing them to fight, more often than not to the death. If they were orphans it didn’t matter if they died. No one would miss them. That makes something in Erin very angry. He threw his emotions aside years ago. His friends would vanish when he had been younger. He assumed it was the guards, but when had they ever cared for the kids running wild in the markets? He’s more attentive now, he knows where they went and why they never came back. 

The decision is easy. Getting in is even easier. He’s always had a knack for being one with the shadows. Drunk fools betting on which kid could kill another fastest? They’re not aware of Erin until his kunai is in their throat. Putting his own skills together with what his teacher had taught him comes together before he really thinks about it. Stealth and a deadly strike make quick work of the band of kidnappers. Soon the floors are almost as red as his hair. 

He frees the kids he finds alive. He gathers the bodies of the ones who aren’t and build a pyre. No one will notice another fire coming from the underground. They’re always happening at night. Some kids flee the second they’re free, but most stick around and help him gather the dead. He picks the kidnappers valuables from their bodies, there’s a ring of keys, some nice weaponry, and a lot of gold. He takes half the gold for himself and tells the kids to figure out what they will with the rest and the other valuables the men have like jewelry. 

One of the kids tells him about the house up above where others are being locked up. He pats the kid’s head and says he’ll free them. What he doesn’t expect to find is older kids. Kids his age, young teenagers tied up like wild animals. Some have awful scars and missing limbs. Most look like the old men he would see that smell of death when they parade from bar to bar. He frees them and they run like death is on their heels. The house is empty after that. Or at least that’s what he thinks until he hears some thudding from a wall. Moving a bookcase, he finds a hidden door with someone tied up inside. One look at the person’s clothing and he knows this kid is noble. 

The noble houses of Lama were more often than not just rich old men who fought in a few battles as commanders like their fathers and their fathers fathers that then hoarded their wealth like fat pigs. But this was just a kid his own age if not a bit older. Someone who had yet to choose their path in life. He throws a knife at the person’s feet and tells them they can only find freedom by their own two hands. 

The boy can’t see him as he’s blindfolded, but Erin can feel the determination through the fabric. It takes no time at all for the boy to cut himself free. When the restraints drop, the gag is spit out, and the blindfold removed, the other boy wields the knife with practiced ease and charges at Erin. 

His form is all formality and no personal comfort level. Erin knocks the knife away, brings the boy to his knees, and has his own kunai at the other boy’s throat in just seven swift moves. Even on his knees, the boy stares defiantly up at Erin. This is a boy who has danced with death just like he has, even at a blade’s mercy he will not give in. Erin decides he likes the kid and only knocks him out with a sharp blow.

Then like he was never there, he vanishes into the night, leaving a bloodied kunai as the only evidence he was ever there. 

People find him after that. Not for his head usually, a few are stupid enough to try, but for his services. He’s somehow made a name for himself as the red kunai, a deadly assassin who leaves only blood in his wake. They could’ve gone for a more creative name. Like anything else at all could’ve been better than just red kunai, what kind of a name was that? That’s what people call him though, Erin is just a name that slowly becomes lost to time. He kills commoners, he kills soldiers. He kills nobeles, but he never kills children. He becomes so well known the King of Lama himself asks for his services. 

It’s incredibly easy to get into the throne room. It’s even easier to drop in front of the king, kunai at the ready and simply wait until swords are pointed at him. That had been enough time for three strikes, either three killing blows or maybe three people dead. He honestly expected better for the famous royal guard, talk about a let down. The King, for either incredible acting, or simple acceptance doesn’t flinch from the blade at his throat. He simply says he has a job for the star’s greatest assassin. A bold claim if it weren’t true.   
The King wants him to be his son’s personal guard. Hiring an assassin to be the Prince’s personal guard? Was the man crazy or something? He should really just kill the Prince and teach the King a lesson. If the Prince was younger though, he would have to make a show of killing most of the royal guard and not the actual Prince. The Prince however, comes into the throne room in the middle of the exchange. It’s the boy from that first night, the one who surprised him. 

He charges at the Prince, faster than the guards can react to try and stop him. The Prince does not flinch, does not dodge, and does not run. Instead he meets Erin’s kunai with his own blade and a smirk. The Prince says only two words to him in response to his attack, “I’ve learned.”

Well that settles that. 

He takes the King’s offer, despite many of the guards protests. The castle is boring and the King is an asshole. But the Prince is a mystery to him. He’ll fight Erin in mock battles and almost win at least once a week. He doesn’t flinch when Erin appears out of the shadows to scare him. He doesn’t say anything when they walk through the halls and people loudly gossip about the how one day Erin will mostly likely kill the Prince for the throne and this is all an act. 

The King falls ill, a slow acting poison was found in his drink at a formal gathering and the responsible noble is beheaded in the public square. Other assassins come for the Prince’s life as he prepares to take the throne. The Prince does not change his plans, he does not run, and does not hide. The Prince does tell Erin what he wants done though. He’s knows when danger is nearby. The Prince reacts just after Erin does, telling him to make it snappy when it’s a bad day and that Erin can have fun when it’s a good day. He likes when he can have fun with the other assassins. These are people trained to kill with no remorse yet they all fear the death they so easily dish out. What fakes honestly, the other assassins are no fun. They all react the same for the most part. 

The night before the Prince takes the throne he asks for Erin’s name. Names are power, no one has known his name for a long time. When Erin asks why it matters, the Prince laughs and says that throughout history all deadly blades have names and he should know what his blade’s name is considering it’s the deadliest of them all. Erin likes that answer so he finally tells the Prince his name.

Prince Orion, no King Orion changes Lama. For the better or worse, Erin can not say as he never experiences the world beyond Orion’s side anymore. People fear Orion, but really he thinks they just fear him. After all, they never fear the wielder of the blade, just that the blade means their death.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Maybe I should work on the other like five i7 wips i have or the next part of until the magic, or maybe even my original writing  
> Also me: hnnnnggg hoshimeguri characters so much potential hnnng assassin riku hnnnggg


End file.
